People I respect have suggested I publicly demand that Vox Day remove File770 from the Rabid Puppies slate. Then having done so, if Day fails to comply and I ultimately receive a Hugo nomination, they feel I can accept it with a clear conscience.

If I understand Steve Davidson correctly, he wants everyone to make a public statement repudiating slates. I don’t think people are unclear on how I feel about slates, thus it really becomes a question whether — by modeling that behavior — I want to encourage Steve to go around hammering people who don’t post the equivalent of an oath. I don’t.

Consider this point. I have been planning to nominate Black Gate because I’ve been reading it since last year’s Hugo contretemps brought it to my attention, and think they do a terrific job. What if they don’t make a public declaration? Should I leave them off my ballot? And thereby fail to do what I tell every other Hugo voter to do, nominate the stuff they think is the best?

I’m not voting for Black Gate because of a slate, and I don’t intend to be prevented from voting for it by a factor that has nothing to do with what I think about the quality of its work. That’s also why I’m choosing not to follow the advice I received about handling File 770’s appearance on the slate, though the advice is well intended.

As I have repeatedly stated, what I recommend is no one else's concern or responsibility, regardless of why I chose to recommend it. Mike is doing the right thing by simply playing it straight, letting the cards fall where they may, and not worrying about how many people happen to share my preferences.

21 Comments:

Hilarious. File 770 only knew about Black Gate, the greatest print magazine in the industry of the 1st decade of the 21st Century, and then best blog, run by the creator of sff.net...because of the slate of Rabid Puppies.

Good point Nate. It also doesn't quite square with this from Vox when he recommended them for Best Fanzine: "File 770, for all that it has been said...does an excellent job of chronicling events in the SF/F world across the ideological spectrum. Mike Glyer's fan-flagship site continues to be a must-read for anyone even remotely interested in science fiction."

Putting stuff on your slate just to mess with people and try to make their honest opinions about the Hugos and Hugo nominees harder just makes you a bigger fuckwit than you previously were. Which is saying something.